Weyburn District Office

Assistance Available

Projects under the Rural Water Development Program (RWDP) include water source developments such as dugouts, wells, group pipelines, tank loading stations, ground water investigations, and other water-related works.

Soil conservation activities currently include shelterbelt planning and assistance, water erosion prevention (eg. grassed waterway construction), direct seeding and conservation tillage promotion, salinity investigations and forage management.

PFRA staff facilitate rural development and resource management in delivering these programs.

There are 13 community pastures in the District providing summer grazing for 16,000 cows with breeding provided by 500 bulls.

District Description

Weyburn District is located in southeast Saskatchewan. It is bordered by Manitoba to the east, USA to the south, Range 21 to the west and Township 15 to the north. There are 42 Rural Municipalities. The major centres are Weyburn and Estevan with many smaller towns in the District.

The majority of the Weyburn District forms a portion of the Great Plains Region. Land is gently undulating to rolling, broken by numerous valleys, escarpments, plateaus and isolated hills. This region slopes gently to the east at elevations between 470 m to 600 m. The Missouri Coteau, an escarpment having steep relief and variable topography, runs along the extreme southwest portion of the District at elevations reaching 700 m. The Moose Mountain uplands occur in the north-central portion of the District with elevations over 800 m.

Warm, drier regions in the west and southwest have dominantly Brown and Dark Brown Chernozemic soils formed under grassland vegetation. Cooler and more moist areas farther northeast comprise the Black Chernozemic soils. Gray Luvisolic soils are found in the Moose Mountain uplands where Aspen vegetation occurs.

The main economic base is agriculture, oil and small industry. It is a mixed agricultural district where straight grain farms predominate with many mixed grain/livestock operations and some straight livestock operations. Summerfallow acres are slowly diminishing each year with a wide variety of crops now being grown. Wheat, durum, barley and oats are giving way to lentils, peas, canary seed, flax, canola, caraway, coriander and many more.

The specialized livestock industry is also growing with elk leading the way, then emus and ostriches, bison etc. Traditional livestock include cattle operations as well as a few large hog and dairy farms.

Farm diversification and value-added processing are becoming important activities. The oil patch dominates a large portion of the District with thousands of producing wells. There are many small manufacturing industries located throughout the District.

The Moose Mountains are an important tourism destination point offering top rated hotels, camping, cross country skiing and two 18 hole golf courses.

There is open pit coal mining at Estevan also offering tourism opportunities and fuel for major power production.

The Rafferty and Alameda Dams are located in the District. Many smaller dams provide tourism and recreation in the District.